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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Oct. 17th, 2015 03:34 pmI only learned in the last few years that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was also something of a writer, besides being a legendary basketball player. The Times did a nice extended profile piece on the man, and we will keep a few excerpts. I feel a nostalgic fondness for the star from my 70s and 80s. In this selection, we see his awkwardness in the world of sports, as well as his early desire to be a writer.
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Abdul-Jabbar has been in the public spotlight for 50 years, and for almost all of that time, he has drawn the ire of most reporters who have dealt with him. For a black athlete to be accepted by the sports media, especially during the early years of Abdul-Jabbar’s career, he had to appear humble and deferential and continually thankful to the white world for giving him a chance to become rich and famous. Abdul-Jabbar, who, like many shy, intelligent people, channeled his innate awkwardness through a hardened mask of superiority, didn’t fit the model.
[...]
By any measure of accomplishment, whether individual statistics or overall team success, Abdul-Jabbar was an undeniable superstar. His high-school team at Power Memorial, near Lincoln Center, won 71 straight games. At U.C.L.A., Abdul-Jabbar, one of the best players in the history of college basketball, won three national championships and three N.C.A.A. tournament most outstanding player awards. During a 20-year career in the N.B.A., he won the same number of championships as Michael Jordan (six), and bested him by one M.V.P. award (also six). He is the N.B.A.’s all-time leading scorer. And yet discussions of his greatness are usually tinged with annoyance, as if his dominance must be nodded at but not dwelled upon.
[...]
In high school, Abdul-Jabbar took a summer job with a Harlem-based black newspaper and covered the 1964 Harlem riots. His literary ambitions never abated. In the mid-1970s, the writer Gay Talese, while doing research for his book ‘‘Thy Neighbor’s Wife,’’ ran into Abdul-Jabbar at the Playboy Mansion. Abdul-Jabbar told Talese that when he retired, he wanted to become a sportswriter. ‘‘It seemed like such a strange thing to admit,’’ Talese told me. ‘‘It almost felt like he wanted to be anyone else. He was caught in this huge body, but his aspiration was to be diminished in terms of ambition: He wanted to be the man in the press box. You don’t expect a person with stardom in every muscle to want to become a writer.’’
Much later, on a trip back to New York City, Abdul-Jabbar accompanied Talese to Elaine’s, an Upper East Side restaurant that catered to the city’s literary elite. ‘‘He wanted to go be with writers,’’ Talese said. ‘‘He wanted to see Styron and Mailer. Again, I found it very unusual. It just seemed like there was a part of him that didn’t want to be a man of the body.’’
-- Jay Caspian Kang at The New York Times
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Abdul-Jabbar has been in the public spotlight for 50 years, and for almost all of that time, he has drawn the ire of most reporters who have dealt with him. For a black athlete to be accepted by the sports media, especially during the early years of Abdul-Jabbar’s career, he had to appear humble and deferential and continually thankful to the white world for giving him a chance to become rich and famous. Abdul-Jabbar, who, like many shy, intelligent people, channeled his innate awkwardness through a hardened mask of superiority, didn’t fit the model.
[...]
By any measure of accomplishment, whether individual statistics or overall team success, Abdul-Jabbar was an undeniable superstar. His high-school team at Power Memorial, near Lincoln Center, won 71 straight games. At U.C.L.A., Abdul-Jabbar, one of the best players in the history of college basketball, won three national championships and three N.C.A.A. tournament most outstanding player awards. During a 20-year career in the N.B.A., he won the same number of championships as Michael Jordan (six), and bested him by one M.V.P. award (also six). He is the N.B.A.’s all-time leading scorer. And yet discussions of his greatness are usually tinged with annoyance, as if his dominance must be nodded at but not dwelled upon.
[...]
In high school, Abdul-Jabbar took a summer job with a Harlem-based black newspaper and covered the 1964 Harlem riots. His literary ambitions never abated. In the mid-1970s, the writer Gay Talese, while doing research for his book ‘‘Thy Neighbor’s Wife,’’ ran into Abdul-Jabbar at the Playboy Mansion. Abdul-Jabbar told Talese that when he retired, he wanted to become a sportswriter. ‘‘It seemed like such a strange thing to admit,’’ Talese told me. ‘‘It almost felt like he wanted to be anyone else. He was caught in this huge body, but his aspiration was to be diminished in terms of ambition: He wanted to be the man in the press box. You don’t expect a person with stardom in every muscle to want to become a writer.’’
Much later, on a trip back to New York City, Abdul-Jabbar accompanied Talese to Elaine’s, an Upper East Side restaurant that catered to the city’s literary elite. ‘‘He wanted to go be with writers,’’ Talese said. ‘‘He wanted to see Styron and Mailer. Again, I found it very unusual. It just seemed like there was a part of him that didn’t want to be a man of the body.’’
-- Jay Caspian Kang at The New York Times
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